My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

“Landscape with a seated shepherdess and her dog, facing front and
looking down at the dog, a tree in shadow at left, a resting cow and three
sheep at right, behind a fence the ground rises into the distance, the slope is
dotted with groups of trees and shrubs, a large house on the hilltop at right”

Condition: crisp and well-printed impression, trimmed along the image
borderline on the sides and bottom and well within the borderline at
the top edge. There are replenished losses at the upper corners and the lower
right corner. The sheet is laid upon a conservator’s support sheet of fine
washi paper.

I am selling this quietly beautiful etching of a shepherdess
having a deep and meaningful chat with her dog for AU$132 (currently US$101.34/EUR87.04/GBP76.96
at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the
world.

If you are interested in purchasing this rarely seen print in today’s
art market, please
contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice
to make the payment easy.

There are so many features in this print that could be discussed.
See, for example, the amazing treatment of foliage in the distant trees or the
empathy that Dujardin must have felt with rural folk to portray a shepherdess
absently talking with her dog. Rather than the clearly very special features
such as these, I have decided to discuss something that to me is the hallmark
of a great artist: the insightful way that Dujardin employs contour strokes to
render the form of the tree on the far left.

What I find very revealing about Dujardin’s contour strokes on
this tree is not just that the lines pictorially “wrap” around the tree trunk
in elliptical curves to “explain” the girth of the trunk, but that the lines
are arranged in changing elliptical patterns matching the changing viewpoint in
which the trunk is seen; viz, “downward” curved elliptical contours at the
base; almost horizontal contours at eye-level; “upward” curved elliptical
contours at the top.